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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: straight life who wrote (23103)	4/19/2000 11:24:00 PM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

This is, by far, the best explanation I have read of the storage industry....it goes in-depth into the different approaches by EMC and NTAP. tsrec.com I have a little bit of NTAP, but might have to start increasing my stake....I'm beginning to think that my King (EMC) might be hearing footsteps. FYI....EMC supposedly has a huge product annoucement on Monday. Slacker

To: straight life who wrote (23103)	4/20/2000 12:04:00 AM
From: Uncle Frank	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

>> I actually made money on them, I was more of a technician, not a ltb&h at all, and when they went down I sold. I'm still not sure that isn't the best policy. Out of curiosity, would you buy stock in a company like ICC Industries today? uf

To: straight life who wrote (23103)	4/20/2000 12:30:00 AM
From: Mike Buckley	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

straight life, I found out that if they ever had, the major industrial company (I forget their name) whose technology [ICGN was]licensing would've made all the money. I don't remember the name either, but it's a huge chemical company. Erick and I weren't in the stock as early as you were, but at the time we were in it that wasn't a problem. In retrospect, the really interesting thing is that at the time Erick and I owned the stock the terms of the joint venture you're remembering changed. The terms became much more favorable when ICGN bought out 90% or so of their partner's interest. We thought ICGN had done a great job of changing things around in their favor when in reality Gorilla Gaming would have told us that the big-boy partner simply got tired of waiting for their investment to pay off due to lack of product adoption. We investors should have reacted similarly and didn't. Frank, You asked if we'd buy ICGN knowing what we now understand about Gorilla Gaming. My answer would be that I would definitely give it serious thought if it remained the leading contender in its space and if the tornado had formed. If I were forced to make an educated guess, I would bet that the nature of the industry would allow the product to go through through years and years of slow to moderate growth with no tornado forming. At the time Erick and I got out, the product had not crossed the chasm. Considering that straight life got out before Erick and I got in, you have an idea of the product adoption when he owned the stock. The product was a proprietary, open technology with a mass market potential. The value chain has (had?) the potential to be tremendous though I don't believe there was any cost to switching. Because of that weakness, I would consider it especially susceptible to a discontinuous innovation that need not be significantly better or cheaper. Carrier was the potentially big reseller of the product that could have started knocking down the bowling pins for the company. Sadly, for a lot of reasons Carrier was very slow to begin adopting the product. I have no idea if they are using it to any substantial degree today. I wish the company were public because that would make it easier to follow. It could be an interesting exercise in Gorilla Gaming to track the progress of the product especially in light of the very early ownership straight life, Erick and I could put into perspective. It would be an especially interesting exercise because the product is enabling hardware, a very rare bird from which we might learn something. --Mike Buckley